


have me/love me

by poppyrainstorm



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), M/M, Post-Canon, and it is at the beach, beach trips, hopeful healing with some kissing is how i would describe this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:22:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25779640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppyrainstorm/pseuds/poppyrainstorm
Summary: This is the part he’s getting better at, but it’s still awkward and his hands are still clunky. Karma’s hands are the hands of someone who is good with rubbery green knives and exam pencils, not with people’s hearts.or: the ocean is a good place to reflect
Relationships: Akabane Karma/Shiota Nagisa
Comments: 10
Kudos: 88





	have me/love me

**Author's Note:**

> my brand really is becoming <2k assclass fics huh. 
> 
> this fic does contain spoilers for the end of assassination classroom! they are vague but they are there! please be warned! also, if it isn't clear, they're meant to be in college in this fic ok i really am done now
> 
> title is borrowed from part of taylor swift's betty, because yeah i liked folklore a lot

The sun sets and Nagisa takes his shoulder gently, presses them chest-to-chest, smiling sweetly. There’s gold on his lashes and his smile and the drink he had at the stupid beach bar is lingering on his lower lip. He tastes like peach sake and cherries and the ocean. 

Sweet, sweet, sweet. 

Nakamura is back at the hotel, having left them a half hour ago. She and Kaede are still doing their dance around each other, even though Karma had told her that it really wasn’t worth it and she should just make a move. He still wonders if she will, before the trip is over. 

“Reapply the sunscreen every hour and a half!” Kaede had reminded them as they left, pinkies brushing, and Nakamura had flashed a look over her shoulder that simultaneously said _I’ve got this, dumbass, don’t you see_ , and _what do I do now, help_. Karma had wiggled his fingers at her in that way that he knew was aggravating and watched as she scowled at him. Nagisa had laughed behind one hand as the idol singers on the radio had begun to sing about collarbones and fingernails, something that Karma really doesn’t understand. 

“There isn’t even direct sunlight anymore, Kaede-chan!” Karma had yelled, and Kaede had looked over her shoulder at Nagisa and mouthed _reapply_ as she and Nakamura headed for the boardwalk. Her flip flops made loud noises as she left, and in their absence there was only Nagisa’s quiet breath and the tapping of Karma’s too-long fingernails against the wood of the tables. 

“Do you want to walk?” Nagisa had asked, and Karma had nodded. They had gotten up and paid for the food and Nagisa's overly sweet drink, and gone down to take a walk on the beach while the sun died in a glorious spill of purple and red over the horizon. They had walked and Nagisa had scuffed his feet in the sand until Karma had eventually given in. 

“Something you want?” He’d asked. 

“Not much.” Nagisa had said. He squeezed Karma’s hand tightly and sure, they’d gotten their shit together a month before Kaede and Nakamura were about to, but it didn’t mean that Karma was any better at this than Nakamura was. In some ways, actually, he was a lot worse, but he wasn’t about to admit this. 

“If you want something, you should say it.” He said, because he could say secret things like that now and they would end with Nagisa shooting him a secret look and then stretching up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek softly before Karma rolled his eyes and made some cheap shot about Nagisa not _actually_ kissing him. This usually earned him a glare and a better kiss, with more tongue involved and sometimes Nagisa’s mouth on his neck, too. 

“Just thinking.” Nagisa said conversationally. He got like this, sometimes, unwilling to actually talk. Sometimes Karma thought it was a result of junior high, of talking too much and spilling his heart out in purple and red and having to kill it at the end of the year. 

No one could take that away from him. It’s been years since junior high and Karma isn’t sure if this is good or bad. 

“Let’s sit down.” Karma had offered, not unkindly but not exactly a suggestion either. Nagisa had hummed a little and they’d sat, looked at the waves. Nagisa’s eyes were a million miles away, probably back in Tokyo. Back at Kunugigaoka. 

He got like this, sometimes. 

“Hey.” Karma said. “Look at me.” 

“Hm?” 

“Look at me.” Karma said again, and this time Nagisa did. 

“I’m looking, Karma.” He always is, isn’t he. Snake eyes, blue and fiery and so precise. Karma thought right then, with the edges of night beginning to creep out and the crash of the waves, it would probably be a cardinal sin not to kiss him, so he did. 

Nagisa’s mouth was salty like the ocean that kissed his mouth earlier when Nakamura dunked him. Underneath the fruit of the drink he’d had at the restaurant, there was the chapped mark of the wind. Everything loves Nagisa. Karma loves him the most. 

And so this is where they find themselves now, with the waves crashing around them and the first star coming out to look at them placidly. Nagisa looks gold and angelic. Even angels kill, after all. Karma can never forget how he sobbed when he brought the knife down. He leans up and Nagisa meets him halfway, matches him easily, urgency in the clutch of his hands and the curve of his cheek. Some things you don’t forget. Nagisa was in this same position when he brought a knife down; it’s only two sides of the same coin, isn’t it. 

“You’re beautiful.” Karma tells him in between breaths, pushes it into his mouth and cheek and the hollow underneath his throat. Nagisa lets out a small whine and presses closer, grips Karma’s shoulders and presses into him. There is no knife, no grass, no government agent ready to do the job if Nagisa can’t. It’s only them. 

They tug away and something drips onto Karma’s shoulder and okay. Okay. This is the part that he isn’t good at yet, putting his arms against Nagisa gently when he buries his head in Karma’s neck and lets salt run in streams down his cheeks. This is the part he’s getting better at, but it’s still awkward and his hands are still clunky. Karma’s hands are the hands of someone who is good with rubbery green knives and exam pencils, not with people’s hearts. 

He holds Nagisa, though. The waves crash and the red turns to purple and the purple turns to blue. Bruises fade, or turn to scars, but the scars still hurt when you press them hard enough. Karma sometimes wonders what would happen if you sliced open their chests and examined their hearts neatly, whether even Nakamura’s would have a cut in the shape of a yellow circle on hers. 

His hands are awkward, and he doesn’t speak because the only words he knows are sharp and strange and not quite right. But he’s there, and Nagisa cries quietly, and it’s enough. 

***

They go back to the hotel and Karma reaches out to intertwine their fingers. Nagisa looks at him with eyes that are large and soft and confused. You would never believe that these eyes could kill. 

Karma kisses the place between neck and shoulder, a little awkward, and maybe it tastes like salt, but they both pretend it doesn’t. The elevator is too large; Nagisa slumps against the mirrored wall as the music plays. 

When they get back the room, they shower the salt off of skin and Nagisa wears his careful reading glasses as he scans one of his textbooks and takes neat notes for his class on child development. Karma hooks his chin over his shoulder and offers unhelpful answers, eventually offering to get him an energy drink from the vending machine down the hall. 

Nakamura pokes her head in at around ten. “Are you two getting ready for bed?” She asks. 

“Not yet.” Nagisa says around a yawn. “This is due tonight.” 

“Our train leaves tomorrow at seven.” Nakamura says. “Finish up, Nagisa.” 

“Soon.” He says, and she gives him a wink and leaves with a swish of her long hair. Karma tries to tug the papers out of his hands, but Nagisa’s never failed to submit an assignment yet and that won’t change just because they’re on vacation. 

“Thirty minutes, okay?” Nagisa asks, and his eyes are pleading but Karma knows that look. 

“Fifteen.” He says with one raised eyebrow. “I’ll help, if you need it.” 

“Nope.” Nagisa says, and they settle back down. The pencil scratches, and Nagisa goes down the sheet quickly, blue eyes flicking down the page. Karma squeezes his shoulders and goes to get under the comforter. 

Fifteen minutes later, there’s a rustle of paper and the click of a light. The sound that indicates that Nagisa’s glasses are closing, going to the nightstand. The slight dip of the mattress. Karma turns and he’s surrounded by warmth, hotel soap and Nagisa’s skin. 

This is the part that neither of them are good at. 

But they’re working on it.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading until the end! i feel a bit weird about the pacing but overall positive about this and i really love some parts of it. i literally wrote the whole thing last night at 2am so if it seems a little weird, that's why. edited by yours truly, so if there are any spelling errors, please forgive me. also i think we all know the end of assassination classroom is painful, and i have only watched it once for those reasons, so if any of the incredibly vague allusions i made to it were incorrect, please pretend they are not.
> 
> if you enjoyed this, please leave me a kudos or a comment! i love hearing what people think, really <3 <3 <3
> 
> i have a [twt](https://twitter.com/poppyrainstorm) and also a [tumblr](https://poppyrainstorm.tumblr.com/)! i don't use my tumblr terribly often, but i can promise you that if you message me on either platform, i will answer you <3


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